RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a popular format for distributing content from one or more websites for collection and display on another website or page, computer program, or mobile device. RSS feeds create a list of updates that contain titles, short descriptions, and hyperlinks to longer articles or Web pages, as well as a reference linked back to the originating site. Rather than constantly visiting websites to check for new information, users can simply subscribe to various information sources in an RSS feed, which then delivers new content to the user automatically, allowing the user to aggregate content and stay updated with minimal effort. When RSS code includes an “enclosure” that is an audio file, it is often referred to as a “podcast.”
Recently, audio files such as songs, news reports, and entertainment/opinion are increasingly distributed as podcasts. The word “podcast” is a neologism of the words “broadcast” and “pod” (a reference to the successful portable media players). Podcasts are typically an episodic series of audio or video files that users can subscribe to and download to a computer or mobile device through web syndication or online streaming. Often, a news or entertainment source will periodically generate an audio or video file, and add it to a podcast so that subscribers to the podcast will be updated with the newly generated audio or video file. Typically, a list of all of the audio or video files associated with a particular series or podcast is maintained on the content distributor's server as a web feed (such as an RSS feed). Users can then use special client application software, known as a “podcatcher,” to access the web feed for updates and download any audio or video files newly published in the series. Because the files are downloaded, the user can store them on his or her computer or mobile device for offline use, enabling continued and flexible access to the audio or video file.
Because podcasts have become such a popular and easy-to-use method for distributing rich media content, users increasingly desire to share podcasts with their family, friends, and colleagues in an advanced and flexible way. Currently, however, options for sharing podcasts are severely limited. To share a single podcast, a user must copy and paste a link to the podcast (i.e., the URL of the podcast) and then send the link to the podcast to one or more contacts using traditional means, such as e-mail, SMS, etc. Certain podcatchers might build in simple mechanisms that automatically call up an e-mail or SMS client for this purpose, but they still rely on tediously sending a link for a particular podcast. Some podcatchers also make it possible to send contacts an entire list of podcasts that the contact can then subscribe to. However, again, this method involves nothing more than generating a list of links to each podcast the user desires to share. The method then involves sending the list of links to a contact, for example, as an e-mail attachment. As a result, a recipient of the shared list of files must import all of the podcast links into the user's podcatcher, or individually copy and paste each podcast link into the user's podcatcher client, so as to individually subscribe to each shared podcast.
These existing techniques for sharing podcasts suffer from many drawbacks. First of all, the process of copying and pasting podcast links is tedious and cumbersome. If a user desired to share a playlist of related podcasts from different publishers, the user must copy and paste each podcast URL for sending to the user's contact, and the recipient must individually subscribe to each received podcast URL. Second, the process is static. That is, once a user shares a list of podcast URLs with the user's contact, the process has ended, until the user manually updates his or her contact with a recommendation to add or remove a podcast from the user's subscriptions. If the original user decides to stop subscribing to a podcast, or decides to subscribe to a new podcast, the recipient of the podcast list will not be updated unless the original user calls, e-mails, or texts the recipient with a suggestion to follow suit.
Accordingly, a need exists for systems and methods for sharing electronic content. More generally, a need exists for systems and methods for dynamically sharing audio content, such as in RSS feeds and podcasts.